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In today's world, when the time comes to retire an old hard drive, many users wipe the device clean before they kick it to the curb. That's the smart and safe thing to do, mainly because the drive may contain sensitive information. According to Microsoft UK's Nick McGrath, erasing drives before disposal is a thing of the past thanks to Windows Vista's new BitLocker drive encryption technology.

Speaking at Infosecurity 2006, McGrath told the audience, "With Vista and Bitlocker, businesses will be able to throw hard disks away and be sure (they are) secure." Almost daring hackers to try to decrypt a BitLocker-protected drive, McGrath continued, "The technology itself is 100 percent secure--we will not be producing any backdoors." His statement was in response to some accusations that Windows Vista would include backdoors essentially allowing police to decrypt hard drives in order to obtain sensitive information about suspects.

Although McGrath showed unwavering confidence in BitLocker, Microsoft Technical Security Advisor Steve Lamb told CNET that there is no such thing as foolproof encryption. Lamb warned that any encryption algorithm can be broken with enough horsepower.

"Using Bitlocker dramatically reduces the risk to data. I don't want to teach anyone to suck eggs, but you've got to ask 'What's my appetite for risk?' and apply the appropriate constraints. Some enterprises may decide it's a low risk, while in a military environment they may decide to smash the TPM to pieces."

While I can understand McGrath's excitement toward BitLocker, I highly doubt that companies which are currently wiping drives before trashing them will stop. Even if BitLocker actually is 100 percent secure, it just isn't worth the risk of an unwanted someone compromising your sensitive data. Regardless, BitLocker is a welcome addition to Vista. For all the companies that accidentally place a permanent lock on their data, there will be several other ones that prevent real data theft thanks to BitLocker.